Human nature will not change. In any future great national trial, compared with the men of this, we shall have as weak and as strong, as silly and as wise, as bad and as good. Let us therefore study the incidents in this as philosophy to learn wisdom from and none of them as wrongs to be avenged.
~ Abraham Lincoln, November 10, 1864

Sunday, June 1, 2014

June Birthdays

John Hunt Morgan was born in Huntsville, Alabama, the eldest of ten children of Calvin and Henrietta Hunt Morgan. He was a maternal grandson of John Wesley Hunt, a founder of Lexington, Kentucky, and one of the first millionaires wet of the Allegheny Mountains. He was 36 years old when the Civil War began. He was the eldest of six brothers, all of whom would fight for the Confederacy. His two sisters married Confederate generals. He and his brother, Tom, were killed during the war.

Henry Mosler, born June 6, 1841Henry Mosler was born in Tropplowitz, Prussian Silesia (now in Poland), the first son of Gustavus and Sophia Weiner Mosler. The family would eventually grow to eight children: five sons and three daughters. Henry Mosler was 20 years old when the Civil War began in 1861.Harriet Beecher Stowe, born June 14, 1811

Harriet Elisabeth Beecher was born in Litchfield, Connecticut on June 14, 1811. She was the seventh of 13 children born to religious leader Lyman Beecher (1775-1863) and Roxana (Foote) (1775- 1816), a deeply religious woman. Harriet Beecher Stowe was 50 years old when the Civil War began.

Adah Isaacs Menken, born June 15, 1835Adah Isaacs Menken was also known as Adelaide McCord and Ada Bertha Théodore. Because Menken told so many version of her origins, including name, place of birth, ancestry, and religion, historians have differed in their accounts. Most have said she was born a Louisiana Creole Catholic of mixed race, with European and African ancestry. She was variously reported to have been born in New York, Havana, and other places. She was said to have been born of a distinguished, old Southern family; another account claimed she was born in Arkansas of a French mother and an American-Indian father. She was 26 years old when the Civil War began.

Joseph Hayne Rainey was born into slavery in Georgetown, South Carolina, a seaside town consisting mainly of rice plantations. He and his brother, Edward Jr., were of mixed race; their mother, Grace, was of African and French descent. Their father, Edward Rainey, had been allowed to earn money by creating a successful business as a barber, though he paid a portion of his income to his master as required by law. He saved enough by the 1840s to purchase his freedom and that of his wife and sons. Joseph Rainey was 29 years old when the Civil War began.

Martha Ready Morgan, born June 21, 1840Martha Ready was born near Murfreesboro, Tennessee on June 21, 1840. She was the sixth of eight children born to Colonel Charles Ready, Jr. and Martha Strong Ready. She was 21 years old when the Civil War began.

Born in Litchfield, Connecticut, Henry was the eighth of thirteen children of Lyman Beecher, a Presbyterian preacher from Boston, Massachusetts. Henry's mother, Roxana Foote, died when Henry was three years old. He was 48 years old when the Civil War began.

David Sinton, born June 26, 1808David Sinton was born in County Armagh, Ireland, the son of Quaker linen manufacturer John Sinton, of Unshinagh, and Mary McDonnell Sinton. John Sinton was a cousin of Irish Quaker industrialist brothers, Thomas and John Sinton. The Sintons, like so many of Northern Ireland's linen families, were Quakers. David Sinton was 53 years old when the Civil War began.